Climax and Dénouement

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
New Order ◽  
Middle Ground

This chapter details events in 1799, when a gathering and confrontation of the forces described in the preceding chapters took place with the War of the Second Coalition—a confrontation in which the matter in question was the survival of the New Republican Order in Europe. Neither side can be said to have won. Or rather, the counter-revolution was certainly defeated, but the New Order prevailed only by being transmuted into something else, the authoritarian, innovating, dynamic, and yet compromising semi-monarchism or semi-republicanism represented by Bonaparte. The struggle went on because compromise was impossible; and compromise was impossible because so few people were ready to occupy a middle ground, and because so many, on both sides, feared that any advantage gained by their adversaries would be ruinous to themselves.

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